


I Often Dream of Trains

by bestliars



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, Magical Realism, San Diego Gulls, Trains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-22
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-06-03 21:12:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6626500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bestliars/pseuds/bestliars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shea has never been on a train before, but he knows he will be. He knows a lot of things about the future. He’s seen it in his dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Often Dream of Trains

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ionthesparrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ionthesparrow/gifts).



> Ummmmm… This prompt made me think of the Robyn Hitchcock album I took the title from, and since I had a title I had to write something. Thank you for liking weird stories.
> 
> Thanks to my sweeetheart for beta reading/letting me talk about comedy/etc.

“Are our thoughts nothing but passing trains, no stops, devoid of dimension, whizzing by massive posters with repeating images? Catching a fragment from a window seat, yet another fragment from the next identical frame? If I write in the present yet digress, is that still real time? Real time, I reasoned, cannot be divided into sections like numbers on the face of a clock. If I write about the past as I simultaneously dwell in the present, am I still in real time? Perhaps there is no past or future, only the perpetual present that contains this trinity of memory. I looked out into the street and noticed the light changing. Perhaps the sun had slipped behind a cloud. Perhaps time had slipped away.” — Patti Smith

 

 

Last year Shea couldn’t see the future. Last year he played in Seattle, and had to wait for things to happen. Some things were predictable, but he was without the gift of foresight. He had to wait to see.

This year, in California, it’s different. This year, in California, he dreams of true things before they happen. He knew that things would change with the move from junior to playing pro, but he wouldn’tve predicted this. Getting visions comes as a complete surprise. And even though he dreams about the future now, it still takes a lot of hustle to keep up with the present.

There’s this Buster Keaton movie where he’s on a train, and there’s another train in front of him, and the people on the train up ahead are trying to sabotage Buster, trying to make his train stop, and he has to keep on doing shit to keep going. The guys in the train up ahead throw stuff on the tracks, and Buster has to move it off. They divert him to a dead end, and he has to backtrack and get back on the right tracks to keep following them. With the backtracking the train gets bogged down and Buster has to throw dirt on the wheels so they get enough friction, but then the train takes off while he’s looking for more dirt to kick, and he has to chase after it and jump back on board. The train up ahead sets a whole compartment of junk on fire and then leaves it on the tracks and Buster has to get it out of the way. There are ten thousand things that he has to deal with, and there’s never any pause, the trains keep chugging along. There’s no other direction, just set tracks to follow along, chasing after something that’s somewhere up ahead.

Shea’s whole year is kinda like that. Playing for the Gulls and the Ducks and going back and forth and seeing the future in his dreams is a lot like being Buster Keaton in that movie. It’s one thing after another, each more unlikely the last, on and on. He just has to figure it out and keep going.

Shea had never seen the inside of a train before this year. Not in person anyway. Only in the movies. Only in his dreams. He never used to dream about trains. He never used to remember his dreams like he does now. He never used to wake up knowing the future.

Shea knows that getting visions of the future should feel like a bigger deal than taking a train for the first time, but having visions in his dreams isn’t anything he can talk about, it isn’t anything he can understand. Taking the train from San Diego to Anaheim though, that’s a conversation starter. Even before he got called up in December, the very possibility was worth discussing. If a call up comes when the Gulls are at home, and the Ducks are at home, management is just going to stick them on the train. Before it happens to him he sees it in action, his teammates getting shuttled back and forth. Before it happens to him he sees it in a dream. He knows it’s coming, he just has to be patient. He’ll be headed to Anaheim eventually. It’s hard to say when — that’s a problem with Southern California, it looks beautiful and warm year round, no snow or fall leaves to give him a hint of when he’ll get the call. Until then he has to bide his time, enjoy San Diego as best he can.

Knowing the future hasn’t made the adjustment to San Diego any easier. If anything it leaves him even more lost. He can’t rely on glimpses of things that haven’t happened yet or he’ll get ahead of himself. He’s still making friends in real time. He can’t fast forward to the time when the team gels, when they’ve figured each other and Eakins system out. This is different for him than juniors. This is different for everyone. There wasn’t a team in San Diego before this year. They’re all figuring things out together, and it’s a learning experience. Having AHL teams in California is a bold experiment, a step into the future of hockey in America.

His progress in hockey so far has been moving further and further down the coast. From home in B.C., to Seattle for Juniors, and now here in San Diego. The goal is a hundred miles back up to Anaheim. He doesn’t like doubling back like that as a trajectory. It would look better as a straighter line, down and down and down. But life isn’t that neat. And he isn’t that straight. 

But he isn’t trying to think about that. There’s hockey to play, and sunshine to enjoy, and dreams to remember. California is full of new experiences. There’s the train, and getting paid for the game’s he’s playing, and learning to live on his own. The game is faster and rougher than junior. The sun’s brighter than he’s used to. And then there’s Brandon.

Brandon belongs to California. He met Brandon at prospect camp in Anaheim. They didn’t get close, and didn’t stay in touch during the year. Brandon went back to wherever he came from, and Shea went back to Seattle, back to his real life where Brandon didn’t exist. Brandon was there in Norfolk, on the wrong coast at the end of the season, but he was quiet and Shea had other things to think about. Brandon fits in California. He makes sense in California.

Or no, that isn’t it at all. Brandon in California is blindingly nonsensical and absolutely right. Shea has no choice but to accept it. Brandon’s good to play with. Brandon’s better looking than Shea would willingly admit. Brandon is Shea’s favorite player on the ice. Shea would tell anyone this. His favorite player off the ice as well, but that goes unsaid. That goes unthought. That is something small and true that he is more than a little bit afraid of.

They’ll reach a time and place where they can explore what that means, but it isn’t here and now. Shea can keep burying that fear, for now. There are more immediate concerns. Groceries to get. Dinners to reheat. Games to prepare for. He has to learn how to defend in front of all the different goalies, how Gibby is dependable, and Hackett has a temper, and Khudobin plays well even though he doesn’t really want to be there. It would be harder if Brandon wasn’t there on the ice with him.

He tries to think about all of the minutiae of life in San Diego. It would be so easy to stay preoccupied by the future, but that would be a trap. He needs to live in the present, not just wait for the day he gets to take the Amtrak up to Anaheim for his first call up. 

Amtrak is an interesting word. He’s pretty sure it’s supposed to stand for something, that it’s an acronym or an abbreviation, Americansomethingorother, but he doesn’t actually know. His dreams might show him the future, but they don’t teach him shit like that. He’d have to google it. It would be so easy to find out, but he likes to leave some mystery in the world. 

It’s an awkward word, Amtrak. It could from an alien language. It could mean something lost and ancient and sacred. 

Sometimes he dreams of futures that have nothing to do with him. He is one heartbeat in an expanding universe. Sometimes he dreams of futures that are far away enough to feel imaginary, the dying stars of other solar systems, and sea creatures he doesn't recognize singing songs he doesn't understand in a body of water that may or may not be on Earth. He knows in his bones that these dreams are true things that haven't happened yet, just like all the others. These are things he will never see with his own eyes. It can be overwhelming. It makes the dream of kissing Brandon less intimidating. The idea of kissing Brandon makes him nervous, but at least it's imaginable and terrestrial. 

He thinks he would have wound up kissing Brandon in his dreams even if he didn’t have visions. He thinks that it might be something his own mind would have invented out of desires he didn’t want to escape from his subconscious. He’s glad that it’s a vision, and not an ordinary dream. Instead of seeing something he wants that seems impossible he gets to be sure that this will happen, eventually. He just has to hold the course and wait. Visions of the future make it feel like the present is moving so much slower.

Getting visions makes everything more complicated. Seeing truth in his dreams feels even stranger when he isn’t in his own bed to cope with it. His apartment in San Diego doesn’t have much, but it’s his. He’s comforted by the blank walls and the way his sheets smell. They’re on the road a lot, which means a lot of hotel rooms with roommates. All of the hotel rooms seem the same, so that isn’t so bad, but waking up from a dream of space travel or next month’s television to his roommate jerking off or making the morning coffee can be a real jolt. With another person right there he doesn’t have any chance to reflect and collect himself. He has to go on to the next thing. Figuring out how the future fits together has to be put aside.

At least that’s waking up in the same place that he fell asleep. He’ll fall asleep on the bus going to a game, and he’ll dream about driving back to San Diego the next day with new bruises to show for their trouble. He can’t tell if they won or not from the dream, everyone’s sleeping around him, just like in the present — everyone except for him and Brandon at least. After Sunday’s game they’ll drive South, and Brandon will sit next to him, blink sleepily and ask what time it is. Shea will wake his phone up to check, and say, “It’s just after one.”

Brandon will ask, “What are you listening to?” and instead of waiting for an answer he’ll move closer to take one of Shea’s earbuds. He won’t back away. He’ll nod his head to the beat of the song and they’ll breath the same air. With the light coming from street lights and passing cars Brandon’s face will be shadowed and beautiful. Even with advance warning, Shea won’t know what to say. The split a song between them with the cord tangled between their bodies. The silence surrounding them will feel infinite. The world will feel very small, without a future or a past, only them, only this.

This will happen just after one in the morning after Sunday’s game, early Monday morning, Brandon won’t give the earbud back, he’ll lean on Shea’s shoulder and fall asleep there. It won’t be comfortable, and Shea won’t be able to stop thinking about the bruise forming on his ankle from blocking a shot earlier. It will be amazing though. He won’t be able to break the moment by moving. Shea sits there watching Brandon sleep on his shoulder until the dream ends and he’s thrown back to being awake in the day before this happens. He can hardly wait.

Shea never imagined knowing the future would take so much patience. He wants to get there already. He has to remember not to rush, to enjoy things as they happen, a thousand small moments that lead the way to the future he’s glimpsed. 

They aren’t there yet, but Shea knows it’s coming. The tracks are laid down in front of them. They’re going to get there eventually. Shea’s going to get comfortable, and let Brandon in. They’re going to get closer and closer. He knows how it will happen. He’s already felt the butterflies in his stomach — apparently know what’s about to happen won’t make him less nervous. He knows where it will happen, and when: the sparsely furnished apartment he gets in Anaheim, Brandon’s first call up, drinking beer on the balcony after a loss. He’ll leaning in for a kiss, and Brandon will be still for a moment, and make this beautiful broken noise before deciding to kiss back. Shea’s never heard a sound like this in real life, only in his dreams.

That will be their first kiss, but not their last. Shea’s only seen pieces of what comes after, but it’s going to be a grand adventure.


End file.
